Pioneering Ayahuasca Retreat Center in the Peruvian Amazon

The Temple of the Way of Light is a traditional plant-medicine shamanic healing center located in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest that offers intensive ayahuasca retreats with female and male Shipibo healers. We are dedicated to providing our guests with the opportunity to benefit from the ancient healing wisdom of the Shipibo people, and to helping this unique culture preserve its knowledge and identity in the 21st Century.

Traditional Shipibo Plant Spirit Shamanism

We work with some of the most respected and powerful healers (Onanya) from the Shipibo tribe. They are highly experienced, gentle, caring, and deeply dedicated to healing and embodying the wisdom and sincerity of their people. The healing traditions of the Shipibo people offer an ancient yet pioneering path to health, re-discovering our true nature and re-awakening to our true purpose.

The Temple firmly believes in respecting and honoring the ancient practices of the Onanya, experts in ayahuasca healing and plant-spirit shamanism of the Amazon. They bring a rich cultural and medicinal legacy to the healing process: time-honored rituals, intricate practices, an expansive cosmology, an encyclopedic knowledge of medicinal plants of the Amazon, and a far-reaching ancestral lineage.

We are not part of the new-age movement, nor based on any religion. The foundation of the Temple’s work is facilitating profound healing in a safe, compassionate, and supportive setting. We work only with highly skilled healers and experienced facilitators. The cornerstones of our ayahuasca retreats in Peru are shadow work and soul integration through deep healing on all levels: physical, emotional, psychological, energetic, and spiritual.

Why Us?

The Temple has safely facilitated healing for thousands of people since 2007 and forged an exemplary reputation for stringent safety protocols, compassionate care and a balance of female and male healers and facilitators. We have used our experience to fine-tune a synthesis of ancient Shipibo medicine traditions and modern and Eastern integrative practices that now extends to comprehensive aftercare and integration support long after guests have returned home. All this takes place with an institutional focus on sustainability, permaculture, ethics, and social responsibility.

We offer ayahuasca retreat programs of varying duration, focus, and intensity, with a balance of female and male Shipibo healers, experienced western facilitators, floral baths, a steam bath, a high ratio of healers to guests, a high number of ayahuasca ceremonies, individual consultations, a nutritional and balanced ayahuasca food diet, and a strong focus on how to process and integrate healing, both during and after each ayahuasca retreat.

The safety of our guests is paramount. We are constantly working to offer the safest container and most effective ayahuasca healing experience in the Amazon. We have developed the most stringent health and safety protocols available on any ayahuasca retreat in Peru. The Temple’s commitment to guests begins with in-depth medical and psychological screening during our booking procedure and continues after the retreat through our integration support. Guiding you safely through deep personal healing and growth is our priority, both in and out of ceremony.

Ayahuasca Retreats at the Temple of the Way of Light

An ayahuasca retreat at the Temple offers our guests an opportunity to experience deep healing that reaches into the energetic roots of trauma, imbalance and disorder, as well as initiates a long-term journey of self-reflection, self-discovery, and spiritual transformation.

The foundation of our ayahuasca retreats is the practice of plant-spirit shamanic healing of the Shipibo-Conibo tradition complemented by progressive therapeutic and Eastern psycho-spiritual practices to ensure effective and long-lasting integration.

We are committed not only to providing the safest and deepest ayahuasca healing and plant-spirit shamanism experience in the Amazon, but of equal importance, ensuring that you are able to sustain, cultivate, and integrate your healing experiences back into day-to-day life after your retreat.

We constantly strive to create the optimal conditions and orientation to work with ayahuasca and since 2007 have been passionately dedicated to providing a caring, professional, and supportive setting. Creating a safe, sacred space for our guests to heal, integrate, and transform is our priority.

In the Shipibo language, the name for ayahuasca is Oni (pronounced Oo-knee), which means “knowledge” or “wisdom.”

The Shipibo name for a healer working with ayahuasca is an Onanya, which means “one who has knowledge or wisdom.”

An ayahuasca retreat at the Temple of the Way of Light provides you with an opportunity not only to benefit from the ancient healing traditions of the Shipibo people, but to awaken your inner knowledge and primordial wisdom.

The Temple was founded on the philosophy that an atmosphere of genuine care and compassion provides the optimum conditions for healing. Over many years we have become well known for the sensitive style of our facilitation and the level of support offered to guests by our entire team. A compassionate healing environment is a sometimes overlooked component of what constitutes safety. The non-judgmental setting we provide allows guests to be vulnerable and open, both necessary states for deep healing, while undergoing their ayahuasca experience.

According to indigenous Amazonian wisdom, sharing is the key to maintaining a healthy, balanced life for all. Native people consider protection and preservation of the rainforest sacred duties. Yet with the great increase in popularity of ayahuasca shamanism, we are concerned that the spirit of sharing and protection is being lost. We promote and foster ways to honor and work in reciprocity with the world’s most bio-diverse ecosystem, its people and their traditions.

The Temple holds a vision for the mastery of indigenous healers to be respected, legitimized and honored in the modern world. We aim to cultivate a more sophisticated understanding of the Shipibo system of shamanic healthcare in the West through validating the efficacy of their ethno-medical traditions. We share in the inheritance of the Indigenous wisdom tradition that celebrates a spiritual dimension between all life on Earth, a dimension fundamental to our personal and social balance.

The Temple has formed an incredible team of warmhearted, highly skilled, and respected female and male Shipibo healers dedicated to sharing the rich and complex medical tradition of their people with our guests.

The Shipibo healers have demonstrated over many years at the Temple that they work with the very best and kindest intentions. We are privileged to work with healers who have practiced the ancient art of ayahuasca shamanism for a combined total of over 200 years.

The Temple recognizes that the overall integration process is as important as the healing guests receive during an ayahuasca retreat in Peru.

Regular group discussions and guidance help guests process and integrate their healing experience at the Temple, and we are in the process of developing a 3-month Continuing Care Program to provide ongoing resources and support for the months and years following your retreat. This will include:

• A private Facebook integration group for the Temple community (now available!)
• A team of integration guides and a network of affiliated therapists (now available!)
• Weekly emails offering a road-map for integration over a 3-month period
• A tool-kit of meditations, exercises, practices, resources, and general advice

Journeying to the Temple has been the most profound healing experience of my life. This is the true definition of unconditional love and support.

Carley Dowell

I arrived at the Temple lost and felt like a big cloud was following me. Within days I started changing completely. I am a new man today. This work is equivalent to 10, 15, 20 years of meditation, just downloaded in a few weeks. So powerful.

Jamael Rahill

I came to the Temple physically, spiritually and emotionally depleted. The entire experience at the Temple fed and nourished my body, heart and soul.

Kelly Alexander

Coming to the Temple has been one of the greatest and most opening experiences of my life.

Holly Escobar

Every aspect of the Temple has been considered as a support to the healing process. The Temple has succeeded in proving to be a very safe and supportive environment.

Frederick J. Osterhagen

My experience was amazing!! This has been a life changing experience. The whole process has taught me so much about myself.

Leanne James

WOW! What can I say! I wish more people would get the chance to experience what I have over this past workshop. It completely exceeded all my expectations in every possible way and I can’t begin to describe how eternally grateful I am for this experience of a lifetime.

Susannah Harzmann

I could never have imagined how profound and absolutely extraordinary my experience at the Temple would be. From the moment I arrived I felt the magic of the special place. I have healed and evolved and feel like I have come out on the other side.

Nikki Kelber

We cannot praise enough the work and attitude of the entire staff, healers, facilitators and volunteers. We highly recommend the Temple for anyone considering ayahuasca healing for any purpose.

Alon and Yotam Warburg

The healers are without a doubt guides to wisdom, health and love. They were gentle and loving with boundless compassion.

Imad Salloum

Visiting the Temple was such a humbling experience, filled with beauty and nourishing care. I felt that the healers were of genuine integrity and really eager to help the visitors of the Temple expand.

Jiveny Blair-West

The Temple of the Way of Light is an opportunity to completely change your life. The maestras/os are incredible with vast healing experience and knowledge, so loving, nurturing and truly invested in the wellbeing of all participants.

Darshan

From the very first moment I entered the retreat, I knew it was a special place. I can´t fault anything I have witnessed here—a magical and professionally run retreat.

​We are excited to have accepted a proposal from ICEERS (The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service), who in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation, will be carrying out an independent observational research study on ayahuasca treatment received by guests attending ayahuasca retreats at the Temple of the Way of Light.

This is an exceptional opportunity to significantly advance scientific and academic understanding of ayahuasca. If the majority of the guests who visit the Temple choose to take part in this study, the final outcome will be the single largest research project ever carried out on ayahuasca.